A Commander Compulsion #5

A Commander Compulsion

squire1

23 January 2015

3903 views

Hi everyone and welcome to our latest edition of "A Commander Compulsion", where each time, we delve into making a Commander deck for a casual multiplayer environment. Previously I was picking a Commander at random for each article. While I thought this was a fair and fun way to select the article topic, there was some concern by you, the readers, that this method might lead to some boring articles. I also did not want to work directly from requests, so I have started a new method for selecting article topics. I am putting them to a vote on Facebook. I will pick a couple by hand and a couple at random and then you will vote. The voting for the future article will be posted the same day as the current article is posted here. So go ahead and follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/tappedout.net.

Alright enough business for today. This article is the first one that people voted on which card the Commander should be. And the winner was Feldon of the Third Path.

Feldon of the Third Path

At my LGS we played a league with the preconstructed Commander 2014 decks and oddly enough none of the mono-red players used Feldon of the Third Path as their Commander. He was often seen as the best Commander in that deck by the rest of the players, but was not favored by the mono-red players. It is suffice to say that I am excited to explore the different and creative ways that he can be used.

Let's begin shall we. The first thing we notice about Feldon of the Third Path is that he is a mono-red Commander. Red is often regarded as the weakest color in Commander, so we are possibly at a disadvantage from the get go; but this new share of the color wheel that red is getting seems like it has a lot of potential. He has fine stats being a 2/3 for three mana. The true potential of this guy lies in his ability though. Everyone go back and read this for a minute. Seriously read it again just in case, a lot of people get it wrong. Alight, all done? So for , you can get a token copy of a creature in your graveyard that is also an artifact. This allows us work within a lot of themes already. We could do an artifact matters deck, an ETB (enter the battlefield) trigger deck, a dies trigger deck, a straight out recursion deck, a combination of these, or a great many other things.

When I first started building Feldon of the Third Path, I broke the cards I wanted into a variety of categories, thusly:

• ETB triggers - Some ETB triggers are very common and very strong, yet some are unique. Many of the unique ETB abilities may be important to add to incorporate a level of versatility into the deck. Since Feldon of the Third Path creates creature tokens, it makes sense to get additional value from each creature that comes in.
• Die triggers - There are also a ton of triggers that happen when a creature dies. Just because we are getting token copies of the creatures, does not mean that when we sac them the die trigger does not happen, so we should use that to out advantage. Note that some creatures with echo have ETB and die triggers making them value town.
• Attack triggers - Each token that Feldon of the Third Path creates has haste. This means that if there is some trigger a creature would get upon attack, we could get at least one trigger out of it by using feldon, then attacking. This is at least worth investigating.
• Giant creatures - This category seems kind of blunt, but a good big dude is pretty important when you can flash it in whenever and avoid some of its restrictions if any.
• Sac outlets - At the end of each turn, we have to sacrifice the tokens that Feldon of the Third Path made. Since this is happening anyway, I would like to take advantage of that by using the sacrifice voluntarily before it happens.
• Looting effects - This one is pretty obvious. We need a way to get creatures in our graveyard and red does not have access to mill effects, but it can loot fairly effectively.
• Haste effects - Since Feldon of the Third Path has a tap effect, it would make sense for us to want to use him on the first turn it comes into play. To do that we need to look at ways to give him haste.
• Double effects - Hey everyone, what is better than paying three and getting a Wurmcoil Engine? Paying three and getting two Wurmcoil Engines.
• Artifacts matter - I have seen many people's builds and suggestions that this deck be stocked with a ton of artifacts, but I am not sure you need to. As you can see from the other categories, I am running out of space quickly, so I will not use the artifact matters theme this go around. That said, this could be a very good and interesting build all on its own.

In the end, due to the number of themes/subthemes that are available, I used most of them just a bit and went with a toolbox approach. I find that toolbox decks do very well in Commander as long as you have a way to gain access to the right tools at the right time. Our method for this will be to dump things into our graveyard so that they are all accessible simultaneously.

ETB triggers

There are a lot of cards with ETB triggers in Magic as I mentioned above. I will talk about ETB cards in two capacities. The first is non-creature cards that trigger when a creature enters the battlefield. The second is creatures with their own ETB triggers. At points when both are being activated, it can be an extremely powerful synergy.

ETB triggers when a creature enters

There are not a lot of effects in red that trigger when a creature enters the battlefield, but there are a few. Warstorm Surge and Pandemonium come to mind first. While I like both, Pandemonium is a bit too dangerous since its effect is symmetrical, so I think in this case we just keep Warstorm Surge only. Now Warstorm Surge is not my favorite in this deck because it only hits one target at a time rather than being global, but it is still a good source of damage and removal. Another all-star in this category is Purphoros, God of the Forge. He is an instant add in nearly all creature heavy red decks and will really shine here as long as we have some ways of making a lot of creatures enter, which we will. Enter tokens.

ETB trigger creatures

Token generators

In the previous section, I mentioned how good it would be if we could make a lot of creatures with puphoros, god of the forge out. A good way that we could do this is by exploiting creatures with ETB triggers that create tokens. This way we can do it over and over while leaving tokens behind each time and maybe triggering Warstorm Surge and/or Purphoros, God of the Forge at the same time.

Some of our token options from creature triggers are Beetleback Chief, Chancellor of the Forge, Goblin Marshal, Mogg War Marshal, Myr Battlesphere, and Siege-Gang Commander. Of these I think we are keeping all of them except Chancellor of the Forge. I think the rest are all playable from hand as well and the chancellor is just a bit lack luster, but still some very good cards from this section that I am happy to add. If we stopped building right now, I think it is already a very solid shell.

Removal

In addition to the token generators, we want to have creatures that we can repeatedly bring into play to remove a variety of permanents. First we should consider creature removal, of which we have two routes: outright removal, of which red has little and damage based removal.

Red has a lot of options when it comes to damage based removal from ETB effects. Some to consider here are: Bogardan Hellkite, Fire Dragon, Firemaw Kavu, Flametongue Kavu, Inferno Titan, Magma Giant, and Spitebellows. I feel that Bogardan Hellkite is often a pretty solid choice. Even without the reanimation type effect, he is a very playable card with a lot of range to its play because of the ability to target multiple objects. Fire Dragon seems like it could be good, but is too variable. You are not always going to want this effect, as you may have a lot of non-basics in play and he will do much less. Between Firemaw Kavu, Flametongue Kavu and Spitebellows, the Flametongue Kavu does the least. The other two do more damage and they get themselves into the graveyard if you want them to, so they are keepers. Inferno Titan is always great and with it having haste as a token from Feldon of the Third Path it will get two triggers each time you get one. I think that Magma Giant is a pretty solid keep as well. It is situational, but I have seen a lot of Commander token decks and this is a good way to keep them in check.

As stated before, definitive removal in red is not easy to come by, especially attached to a creature, so we will have to look to artifacts as well. Conquering Manticore and Zealous Conscripts are temporary removal at best, but combined with a sac outlet can be solid removal with a good attack in before hand. Molten Primordial is a good keeper for the same reason as the manticore but even better since you get a Mass Mutiny instead of an Act of Treason. Duplicant is a Commander staple for a reason. Being able to take out almost any creature is pretty amazing and a sure add to this deck. Being able to repeated that every turn or every other turn is phenomenal. Tyrant of Discord is a sort of "going deep" permanent removal. It is a gamble, but still a fairly strong effect for . For some soft removal, meaning they stop creatures from attacking me for a turn or remove them as blockers, I looked at Shrieking Mogg and Thundermare. I think that Thundermare can make the cut just as another tool in the toolbox. As a toolbox deck, we want to have a lot of situational cards at our disposal. Each should be situationally great. They will all need to get into our graveyard to be at our disposal though. More on ways that we will do that later.

After looking at some creature removal, lets look at other types of removal, starting with artifacts. There are a great many artifacts that are extremely powerful in Commander that will be great removal targets. Batterhorn, Ingot Chewer, Keldon Vandals, Manic Vandal, Oxidda Scrapmelter, Ravenous Baboons and Vulshok Battlemaster are all great options. I doubt we will need all of these, but some will be very necessary. Storytime- So I have a volton player in my playgroup. I mean almost every deck he builds. We joke about it a lot and I have built joking hate decks for it. If you find yourself in a Voltron heavy meta, Vulshok Battlemaster is a great option, but not needed here. Ingot Chewer and Keldon Vandals both go down cheap and then get themselves into the graveyard, so I think those are keepers. We will only end up with one more slot and Batterhorn, Manic Vandal, Oxidda Scrapmelter, and Ravenous Baboons are all very similar. So to choose one I would go with Ravenous Baboons because the lower cost and BABOONS.

The last type of removal that we want to look at is land removal. There are a lot of lands in Commander that can be a serious problem to play against. Maze of Ith, Inkmoth Nexus, and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale just to name a few. Being able to stop these cards is very important to plan for in a toolbox deck. For land destruction on creatures we have many options. Avalanche Riders and Faultgrinder both seem like great ideas since we get a body, they get to the graveyard easily and cheaply, and then we can recur them. That will likely be the only ones we need because we really just need them as a "just in case" policy.

Other ETB tools

So the rest of the toolbox is mostly one-of effects which we might need effect throughout the game but its not worth carving out a ton of space for. Here are the cards that were considered and which ones were kept:

• Anarchist - As you can tell there are not a lot of non-creature spells in the deck thus far. That said there will be a few and we may want to get them back. This guy unfortunately is just not all that needed here. He was a late cut.
• Cragganwick Cremator - When I was first looking through cards, I thought this might be a sort of win condition in this deck and a way to get more creature cards into the graveyard. In the end, through playtesting, I just always had better things that I wanted to recur, so this was left out.
• Dualcaster Mage - Having a reusable Fork at the ready just seems like a good idea. It is also cheap enough to play from the hand. This guy will do a lot of work. It is a definite keeper.
• Fanatic of Mogis - At first blush this seems like a great idea. Deal a boat load of damage every turn to each opponent. It sounds better than it is. Each time I was averaging 4 damage to opponents. Not that great. It has potential but not quite in this build.
• Hoarding Dragon - With the way this deck is built, this creature is a dash 4/4 creature with a fabricate attached. Again we have not discussed that many artifacts yet, but about 10 or so slots in the final build are artifacts, so he will be well worth it.
• Mindclaw Shaman - Repeating this effect over and over again against a spells deck is just amazing. In Commander people play big spells that wait until turn 6-10 to play, but we can potentially start recurring this guy on turn 4 and snipe those spells. This one stays in.
• Ogre Battledriver - The idea was that each creature coming out from feldon would get an extra boost. In actuality this is not good in this deck. It is clunky and is horrible from the graveyard, so it gets left out. Keep this guy in the Marath, Will of the Wild *f-etch* decks.
• Petradon - The idea behind putting this card in was slight ramping. It did not make the cut, but I am not sold on this being bad. The idea is that when it comes out it exiles two tapped lands. When it dies, you get two untapped lands back which makes the net activation for Feldon of the Third Path is . Along with that, you are bringing in a 5/6 with firebreathing. But alas, not this go around.
• Solemn Simulacrum - So our favorite sad robot is almost always a keeper in Commander. In a scenario when you can abuse the ETB and death triggers repeatedly he is a sure thing. I had to think about this one for all of two seconds before he made the final cut.
• Stingscourger - This is a cute piece of the color pie that does not belong to red at all. Bounce is not super strong, but it fights off those indestructible creatures fairly well early on. It also places itself in the graveyard and it just some great reactive recursion when needed.
• Knollspine Dragon - Bringing back hasty copies of a 7/5 flyer is very good, but doing it in response to someone else swinging against one of your opponents for huge card draw is better. On top of that, you get to discard all the creature cards you have in hand to use later. This guy can often be useless, but when he is good, he does everything this deck wants a card to do all in one.

Well that about wraps up the ETB section. Note that ETB triggers are a massive part of the deck. That is how I decided to build this deck. There are other builds that would rely upon these less. Also note that because there are so many ETB triggers available in MTG, I had to limit my discussion to the Cream of the Crop that I actually considered in my initial reaping.

Die Triggers

As with the ETB triggers, death triggers are a given for everything in this deck when using them in conjunction with Feldon of the Third Path. When I started to look at cards that triggered from death I wanted to look at many of the same things that I did for ETB triggers for the same reasons. Note that many of the ETB trigger cards already discussed also trigger on death, so we will not discuss them a second time here.

Just like with the ETB cards I first looked at cards that trigger when other things die. Mimic Vat, Rage Thrower, Skullclamp, Stalking Vengeance,and Vicious Shadows all work from this perspective. Mimic Vat is super great in this deck ("What's that?"..."Non-token?!"...Wow, RTFC you say?). On the other hand, not that great. I mean it still has its uses, but I read it wrong at first and then upon second read it is bad. Skullclamp just seems too good to pass up. For every activation of Feldon of the Third Path I can pay extra and draw two at the end of turn. Rage Thrower sounds good on the surface, but it is targeted damage, so it just becomes slow in multiplayer and its really bad from the graveyard. Stalking Vengeance though is amazing. While it is more expensive, the effect is way better, generally dealing a ton more targeted damage to players. Vicious Shadows is one of those cards that you only ever see in Commander. It flew way under the radar years ago. This card can easily be a win condition if you have enough things dying. Especially if you have draw deck players or force feed players at the table to build up people's hand. This is a must have here.

As before with ETB we looked at cards that leave something behind when they die. Some interesting ideas for this are cards that leave other creatures in the deck behind like Clone Shell and Summoner's Egg, which in turn added to Purphoros, God of the Forge triggers. In this case only Clone Shell made the cut because, at least, you can have it swing when it enters. The only other things that were considered were two very efficient token generators, Rukh Egg and Wurmcoil Engine. Each can come in and leave something worth while in its wake. One is obviously better than the other but they are both solid additions.

The rest of the death trigger cards were just random tools again. I thought about using Su-Chi and Cathodion for mana ramp, but at the step in which all of my creatures would naturally die, the mana is not that useful. It is obviously better with a sac outlet, but this idea never really panned out. Scuttling Doom Engine and Ryusei, the Falling Star both stood out as good sources of repeatable damage. In the end neither really made the cut though because playtesting never indicated that they were truly worth the time. The last death trigger card that I considered was Bearer of the Heavens because that is a big effect and pure power. So much power that this deck is not remotely prepared to handle it and just resets the game which sucks in multiplayer. So no.

Attack triggers

The next group that I explored was cards that trigger upon attacking because if you have haste creatures that die at the end of turn, you should attack with them. Gemini Engine, Goblin Rabblemaster, Scourge of the Throne, Tyrant's Familiar and Utvara Hellkite were all cards that I considered. When I first saw Gemini Engine I wanted to use it here, maybe due to Stangg nostalgia on my part, but I concede that this has no place in this deck. Goblin Rabblemaster is amazing in standard. It is much less so in Commander. In our case it will leave a single goblin in its wake which is pretty weak compared to some of the other cards we already have. It is playable from the hand and is pretty strong there, but overall a bad fit I think. Scourge of the Throne has no issue spreading the love. He is very good at it in fact. He is playable from the hand to make creatures you recur have double attacks and is not a bad target for recursion himself.

For everyone that bought the Commander 2014 red deck, Tyrant's Familiar was designed to play with Feldon of the Third Path as the commander, not Daretti, Scrap Savant, at least that is my estimation. To recur him, lieutenant must be active in which he becomes a powerhouse. This guy was a very late cut, but a cut non the less. In playtesting, he was rarely better than Spitebellows or another beast to stomp with. Utvara Hellkite on the other hand, make dudes. He makes big dudes, dudes that stick around. Then if you use him again, he makes more big dudes. This guys is flat out perfect for this deck and a snap addition.

Giant creatures

When I first started to examine the larger creatures, I was just doing it because I figured that I might as well have some huge beasties, maybe even some that normally have drawbacks that we could avoid, since I am paying so little to get them out. But when I started looking at my options I came up with Eldrazi Gods which don't work with the graveyard and crappy cards like Colossus of Sardia. In the end I only kept one big dumb creature and it is a cross between the aforementioned and the attack trigger pals. That is Pathrazer of Ulamog. A haste, nearly unblockable, annihilator 3 creature that is almost free is pretty hard to turn down. Some of the other non-god eldrazi also crossed my mind. I think It That Betrays maybe should be in here somewhere, but I did not end up making room for it. I did consider Platinum Emperion as well. It looked like a cute trick. If a player surprise alpha strikes you and you have Platinum Emperion in the graveyard, you can recur him and take all of the damage and your life total stays the same. Kind of cute idea, but ultimately just that.

Sac outlets

Sacrifice outlets have to be part of our strategy. We have creatures dying every turn and in order to utilize that we want a way to sacrifice them for value. In addition, we have a couple of Threaten effects in here that would be even better if we had a way to sacrifice other people's creatures. This can be a viable way to kill indestructible creatures. There are some pretty standard sac outlets in commander. Ashnod's Altar, Phyrexian Altar, and Altar of Dementia are very common and reliable sacrifice outlets, but all generally best saved for decks in which you can create an infinite sacrifice loop. Red also has some pretty cool options that are common in Commander such as: Barrage of Expendables, Bloodshot Cyclops, Goblin Bombardment, High Market, and Magmaw. I think that all of these are very viable options and all will be in the deck. If any would be cut, it would be Bloodshot Cyclops. He is bad from the graveyard except for sacrificing himself in which case you can't attack. So if you really wanted something else in this deck, he might be a good candidate to remove.

This next card is being put into this section only because he doesn't really fit anywhere else. Bloodfire Colossus is a creature you sacrifice, so not really a sac outlet, but a sac effect. I figured that a sweep effect might be something nice to have access to and he has a solid body as well for swinging first, but he only made it to the cutting room floor.

Looting Effects

The original preconstructed deck had Daretti, Scrap Savant at its helm to perform a great deal of looting. I would add him in here, but I want to stretch beyond the precon as much as possible and while we have a good deal of artifacts in the deck, I would not call the ones that we have game winners. After looking, the main cards I considered are Bazaar of Baghdad, Control of the Court, Dragon Mage, Faithless Looting, Goblin Lore, Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded, Incendiary Command, Memory Jar, Reforge the Soul, Tormenting Voice, Wheel of Fortune, Wild Guess, and Chandra Ablaze. In other words, there are a ton to choose from. In playtesting Faithless Looting, Control of the Court and Goblin Lore were some of the best cards in the deck. I wanted to cast them every time I drew them. Bazaar of Baghdad is of course awesome, hence the price tag, but it is truly what this deck needs. Use it every turn. I was not all that impressed by Dragon Mage it refreshes other players' hands and needs to connect to do it. He was just never something that I wanted to target. Maybe if he had an attack trigger instead, but not for this deck. Ah [tibalt, the fiend blooded]]. I have said it before and I will say it again. Do not be tempted. He is bad. Do not play him. He is in one of my personal builds. I try to make him work, he doesn't ever. He doesn't even. Unless your goal is a river of tears for you, he does nothing.

Incendiary Command, Memory Jar, Wheel of Fortune and Reforge the Soul all help you fill your graveyard and draw a ton, much in the same way that Dragon Mage would but in a much more efficient manner and often just as cheap and without using feldon. Wild Guess and Tormenting Voice are essentially the same card. I think we only want to run one of them and Tormenting Voice is slightly easier to cast, so that is the one I would keep. I think that with that, we have enough looting.

Doubling Effects

Alright, I think that we have exhausted our creatures and ancillary cards to do with what we want to do with them, like getting them in the graveyard and sacrificing them. Now it is time for us to discuss ways of making our Commander better.

So what kinds of things will make our Commander better on its own? Three things come to mind for me. First, Effects that will double his ability or emulate the doubling. Second, untapping him, which in essence is the same since it increases our activations. Third, giving him haste. Using Feldon of the Third Path the turn he comes into play could be a game changer with an appropriately stocked graveyard.

The first one to discuss is the doubling of effects. Rings of Brighthearth and Illusionist's Bracers are the only way to truly double Feldon's ability. These are both very good and should be included. As promised before, there are even more artifacts coming that might be good fetch targets for the Hoarding Dragon. There are other effects that we can use which don't technically duplicate the ability of Feldon of the Third Path but functionally create the same situation. Puppet Strings, Staff of Domination, Thornbite Staff and Thousand-Year Elixir all untap our Commander allowing us to use him a second time. This ability is very strong but extremely costly as well. We do need this ability to attack with our dead creatures and bring them back on opponents' turns. Thornbite Staff does the most work here in that it will untap him at the end of any turn you activate Feldon of the Third Path since a creature will die on those turns. Thousand-Year Elixir also has a bonus that we will need in giving our Commander a functional version of haste.

Hasting Commander

Using a card like Thousand-Year Elixir to grant functional haste is a pretty sweet bonus, but I think it is just as important to have actual sources of haste as well. In this case we have very few slots left, so I would suggest only using lands. With the addition of Commander 2014, we have gotten the fantastic new card Flamekin Village. We also have the standby of Hall of the Bandit Lord to work with as well. I think both merit a spot in this deck as we would like to maximize the amount of Feldon uses we get.

Other technology

The rest of the cards added to the deck are all sort of main stays of the Commander added for a variety of smaller reasons. Many of these will be lands since we still have those slots open and using utility lands in Commander can be key to your strategy. Sometimes you feel like a land and sometimes you don't, these moments are what make cards like Forgotten Cave and Smoldering Crater shine. I love to play these early but just cycle late game to draw more fuel. We have a few cards that will allow us to target other players' creatures, but hexproof and shroud do get in the way of that, so Arcane Lighthouse is a great addition that still adds mana even without its other ability. Something to take note of in our deck is how reliant we are on out graveyard. A rogue Bojuka Bog could really screw things up for us. Because of this, I decided to add Feldon's Cane and Elixir of Immortality. The cane is better in my opinion because you do not have to keep mana open for it. By the way, does it bother anyone else that in the art for Feldon of the Third Path, that we can barely see this cane. Yes the cane in the art is Feldon's Cane though. Alright, enough of that.

Hammerheim is a card I put in almost every red deck along with Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep, just because there is nearly no reason not to as the only drawback is that it makes us more susceptible to nonbasic land hate. And you never really know when you will need to get rid of landwalk ability or give your Commander first strike. I usually add a Homeward Path just in case as well. You never know what you will be playing against and it's better to be prepared. I have found Myriad Landscape to be less useful and slower than I originally had hoped, but an early drop in a mono-colored deck is where this card belongs, so I think it's worth adding. Much like what I said about Fanatic of Mogis is true about Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx; however, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx does tap for mana even without devotion, so I think this is a keep. Also if we recur something, we can activate the land for extra mana before the devotions decreases again. I added Rogue's Passage for the off chance that we have the extra mana for evasion. Ruby Medallion, Temple of the False God and Sol Ring come in as our only real ramp. I usually add in a Sensei's Divining Top, but in this deck I feel like Scroll Rack is better. I think this will allow us to better craft our hands into more beneficial Wheel of Fortunes and other discard. A Spinerock Knoll gets added into the mix because reasons. I mean maybe we get there and a good surprise, maybe not. Stripmine and Wasteland get added for those tricksy lands that players might use against us. Teetering Peaks is just a little bonus that we could give to a creature that we know will need a boost. For a little extra damage, we can throw in a Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. And finally for a touch of flash on the creatures we actually cast we will throw in a winding canyon.

Whew...and with that gentle-people, I am finished. I think this is the longest one yet. So let's take a look at the final product shall we.

A Commander Compulsion #5

Commander / EDH squire1

SCORE: 16 | 10 COMMENTS | 1533 VIEWS | IN 6 FOLDERS

Ahh, so beautiful isn't she? Sorry again for such a long time between articles. Work is getting busy and I am finding myself with an ever decreasing amount of free time. As with this time, the next commander will be chosen via vote on Facebook at facebook.com/tappedout.net. You can start voting about thirty minutes after this article is releases. The vote will consist of some random, some handpicked and some suggested. Thanks again for reading and feel free to leave your takes, twists, tweaks and suggestions below. And until next time, brew more decks tappedouters.